"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
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DAY THREE
03:49:13 UTC
-continued-
-ooo-
There had always been lots of things she didn't understand.
And before… that had never mattered very much.
In part it was because no one had ever really seemed to notice or care.
Mostly it had been because she herself hadn't noticed or cared.
She'd never thought about the fact that she didn't know how to put on her kimono by herself as anything worth caring about when there'd always been someone around to do it for her.
It had just been how things were done, how things had always been done.
She was talented and the family expected great things from her so it had seemed only natural that they do stuff for her.
She hadn't even thought to question it when she was small.
There'd always been someone around to scrub the dirt from her body in the bath, to cut her food for her at dinner, to tend to her every whim and need.
When she'd grown older, there'd been people to see to her lessons, to teach her how to read and write in between training and performances.
And she'd never thought much about it.
It was just the way things were.
She hadn't even thought to question why she wasn't allowed to wear regular clothes, like the kind she saw on people outside the complex, like the kind she'd worn before she'd been taken in by Grandmother.
Because it hadn't seemed important, hadn't mattered.
Her clothes had been a symbol of her position and necessary for training.
They were special and they made her feel special when she wore them.
Ordinary, boring, stupid clothes weren't good enough for her.
She hadn't been meant to live an ordinary life.
She was special.
She was entitled to better.
More.
And it was easy to accept all that if she didn't think too much about it.
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Every few weeks, she'd wake to find one of Grandmother's students had cut off bits of her hair while she was sleeping, left it crooked and uneven, tufts of broken gold spread across her futon.
She'd spend days clearing it up but, for all her efforts, she'd still find strands and bunches of her hair scattered in corners or tucked in with her few belongings.
She'd started keeping her hair in pigtails all the time.
It wasn't as noticeable that way and it was much easier than trying to even out the length with scissors.
Every few months, someone would tear little holes in her kimono or write nasty words across the inside of the cloth and she'd spend hours outside scrubbing the fabric clean or pricking her fingers bloody trying to mend the holes before someone saw them and blamed her for them.
But she'd never been any good at fixing things, no one had ever bothered to teach her and what she could manage on her own just ended up ugly and sloppy and she never could figure out the trick to getting the kimono clean without pulling and ruining the fabric.
No matter how hard she tried, she'd end up punished for it nonetheless and the other girls would laugh behind their hands at her as she tidied the yard or scrubbed and polished the floors.
She'd wake up some mornings to her hand in cool water, her bedclothes and futon damp and reeking.
Eventually she figured out the trick to cleaning her futon at least.
But all that was fine.
If that was the price she had to pay for being the favorite, being Grandmother's heir, it was still a fair price to pay.
They were all just jealous, because no matter how hard they worked, they would never be what she was.
She was talented.
Special.
She was held to a higher standard.
She was expected to own her shortcomings.
Blaming others for her failures, her mistakes, was beneath her.
"The weak," Grandmother had commented at dinner one evening, "have only themselves to blame."
And she was right.
Grandmother was always right.
She'd spent the better part of that night sharpening the slats of a dozen sensu.
When she'd watched them try to perform without flinching the next day while the fans sliced into their hands and fingers it had taken every bit of willpower she had not to snicker aloud at all their ugly faces.
But it was hearing those nursing injured hands spitting quiet accusations at those who weren't after rehearsal ended that had really made all the effort worthwhile.
They hadn't even suspected her.
Hadn't even glanced her way.
Dummies.
They were all so stupid.
She put thorns in their socks, snuck snakes and bugs into their beds, switched out the sugar for salt in the lower dining hall.
She left them little clues that pointed the blame towards this girl or that.
The accusations and quiet, bitter arguments had been fun to watch.
They still sometimes cut her hair or put needles in her sandals, but that was fine.
It made it look less suspicious if she were being bullied as well.
It made it worth it.
Because she wasn't weak.
Even if they made the mistake of thinking she was.
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Flames licked the air, leaping higher and higher as the roof cracked and collapsed in on itself, spilling sparks and broken tile across the yard.
She could still hear them screaming as she danced, stamping her feet and turning round and round, ignoring the pain in her weak knee, reveling in those fading cries of agony and despair, the sound of fists pounding frantically against charring wood.
She moved too fast, her movements more frantic and less graceful than was traditional.
Traditional.
Ha.
Grandmother wouldn't have approved.
But then Grandmother wasn't in the position to pass down edicts, to judge her worth.
Not anymore.
She gestured with her fan, flicking it out and back in, keeping time with the crackle of flames.
It was everything she'd hoped it would be.
The air was thick with smoke.
It made her lungs burn.
The screams were fading, protests and cries for help dissolving into the silent resignation of death.
It was everything, she'd ever wanted.
She smiled and laughed and clapped her hands to the beat.
Ibuki grinned and accompanied her performance with a punk rock funeral dirge dedicated to all her life had been, maybe for all their lives had been.
She wasn't sure and she hadn't asked, because it didn't matter.
It was enough that she was there with her, accompaniment and audience all in one.
Nothing matter beyond this moment.
This performance.
Their performance, happening on a hundred different stages all over the world.
Despair spilling like acid over everyone and everything, burning away all the stupid, unnecessary parts.
Somewhere in the distance there were sirens.
And in a thousand places both near and far, people were dying and killing and maiming and do any number of other awful things to each other in the name of despair as if it were a banner to rally behind, a battle cry echoing out across the whole of the world.
She danced and Ibuki screamed and the world burned.
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When she wasn't dancing, wasn't training, she played by herself out back, poking sticks into ant piles, squishing their fat little bodies beneath her sandal, between her fingers.
She gave them names.
This one was Abe with the pudgy cheeks.
This one was Furuya, who always tripped over her own feet at least once each session.
That one was Hirose, who laughed like a starving hyena.c
And the biggest, plumpest one was always, always Mikami.
Mikami with the tidy pigtails.
Mikami who pulled her hair when no one was looking.
Mikami who put needles in her shoes.
Mikami who called her names under her breath whenever they were assigned to dance close to each other.
Mean Mikami.
Cruel Mikami.
Fat Cow Mikami.
Stupid Pig Vomit Bitch Mikami.
She pinched the ant until it was nothing but a smear of black across her fingertips.
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"This is for the best, Hiyoko," her father had said, brushing her hair from her face. "Your grandmother will give you everything you need to succeed."
"But I don't want to go! I want to stay with you!"
"I know, I know, sweetheart, and I want to stay with you, but… this… it's for the best. This is the way things have to be."
"Bu-"
"What are you two doing?" Her mother hissed, poking her head around the doorway. "She'll be here any minute. If we keep her waiting, she might refuse to take her at all. Is that what you want?" Her mother cast nervous glances towards the front door as if Grandmother might materialize out of nowhere like a vengeful ghost to curse them all for their ingratitude.
"Maybe I do. Would that really be so bad?"
"Yes! Are you out of your mind? Hiyoko has been chosen to become the heir. Do you understand what an honor that is?"
Had her mother's voice always been so shrill?
Her father's so gentle?
Was it really how things had been?
Or did she just remember it that way?
"She's only a child, Saionji."
"A talented child. She has a gift, but that gift will be for nothing if her talents are not properly nurtured. Hiyoko, pick up your suitcase."
"But Mama, it's heavy."
"I'll carry her bag," her father volunteered quickly, his big hand dwarfing the tiny handle.
"You'll do no such thing. She will want for nothing, she will be favored and revered, but if she is seen as weak, the others will use it to drag her down, to shame her, and she will be cast out in disgrace."
"But Mama…."
Hands closed over her shoulders, so tight it felt like they might crack beneath the tremendous pressure, that unforgiving grip.
Her mother's face is a blur of pinched features, just a jumble of light and shadow.
"Save your tears, Hiyoko, you can not afford them. If you want to be great, you must step over everyone in your path, including your father and I. You will go to Grandmother, you will listen to everything she has to say, do everything she asks of you. You will prove yourself worthy of this honor."
"But Mama…."
"No. Stop it. From this day on, you do not have a mother or a father. You are Grandmother's child and Grandmother's heir and that is all you will ever be. If you excel, you will want for nothing. If you fail, you will be the lowest of the low, you will be cast out without a penny or a friend to aid you on your way. But, succeed or fail, you will never see us again."
She had thrown back her head and wailed.
Great gasping, hiccuping sobs.
Her parents had argued, a mess of loud voices and pointed fingers she couldn't see through her tears and harsh words she couldn't hear over her own cries.
Then, quite suddenly, there had been a loud crack and then silence.
She'd stared at the wall, at the little shrine in their entryway, her vision still blurry with tears for what seemed like a very long time before she'd realized that her face hurt.
"Wipe your tears," her mother commanded, voice stern and cold. "Grandmother's people are here to fetch you."
Her father knelt in front of her, used a handkerchief to wipe at her face, urged her softly to blow her nose.
He didn't look at her.
Not really.
He mostly looked over her shoulder, past her, into the distance somewhere.
As if she were already gone.
"You'll be fine," he'd murmured, a hand smoothing over her hair, tugging gently at one of the pigtails he'd put it in that morning. "Everything will be just fine."
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She threw rocks at the ocean waves.
Big rocks, little rocks, any rocks she could find.
It wasn't very satisfying.
She'd tried throwing rocks at store windows first, but they'd just bounced off.
One particularly large rock had bounced off and hit her in the knee.
That had been even less satisfying.
Eventually, she'd started hauling crap from the supermarket down to the shore and begun pitching that out into the ocean.
The problem with that was that she could never throw any of it far enough that anything that floated didn't eventually get swept back to the shore.
So, again, totally unsatisfying.
Sometime during the second week, she'd started dragging stuff up onto the bridge and tossing it off from there. It was a lot of work and usually by the time she'd gotten to the top she'd been sweating and cursing and she'd kicked off her stupid sandals and just gone barefoot and her kimono was loose and falling off one shoulder… not that there was anyone around to see or care, but it still made her feel funny. Still, it was always worth the effort since it had been way more satisfying to shove things off from there, to watch them plummet down into the distant water, to watch them as they sank beneath the waves or bobbed out towards the horizon.
She'd sipped her juice and sat on the edge of bridge, legs dangling over the edge as the wind whipped through her kimono, pulling at the fabric as she watched one of those big, bright beach umbrellas float off into the distance, envious.
Stupid umbrella.
Maybe it sank when it got out of sight or maybe it just ceased to exist… or maybe the waves really did take it away to a better, noisier place.
She wasn't sure and she didn't care.
Once or twice she'd lost her balance and fallen off the bridge into the water.
It hadn't hurt.
She'd just black out and wake up in bed like nothing had happened at all.
The waves never carried her away.
On those days, when she went to check, there would be another bright umbrella in the supermarket to replace the one she'd sent off the bridge.
Or maybe it was the same umbrella.
She could never tell.
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There were lots of things she didn't know.
And before… before that hadn't mattered very much.
There'd been people to dress her so she'd never had to figure out how to put on the kimono herself.
There'd never been a reason to learn how to do it for herself.
What would have been the point in learning something like that when there'd always been someone around to do it for her?
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Before the island, there'd been people to bully into bringing her the sweets she liked.
There'd been people who'd ignored her.
There'd been people who'd hurt her.
There'd been people she'd hurt.
There'd been people.
When she woke up on the island, on the beach, there'd been people to annoy her.
People to annoy.
People she'd liked.
People she'd hated.
When she woke up in that cabin, in that bed, after… there'd been nothing.
No one and nothing and more nothing.
Empty buildings and deserted places and nobody at all to fill the spaces between.
There'd just been stuff.
Useless, stupid, ugly stuff.
Big colorful umbrellas.
Empty fish tanks.
Weights.
Pinwheels.
Guitars.
Scarves.
Sunscreen.
Greasy crisps in brightly-colored packages.
A freezer full of all the gross flavors of ice cream.
Boxes of stale crackers.
Fireworks.
Melting chocolate, sticky and gooey and oozing out the sides of the packaging.
Binoculars.
Fancy beach chairs in bags.
Sunglasses.
Just stuff.
So much stupid stuff and no one around to use any of it.
And it was lame.
And it was so stupid, stinking boring that it made her want to puke.
But she didn't miss them.
Didn't miss any of them.
They'd never been her friends to begin with.
They'd just been… there.
And, maybe, sometimes, that was enough.
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There were kids who played down by the river near Grandmother's place.
She could see them through the fence and if she stood behind the tree they couldn't see her at all.
Not that she cared if they did.
Not like she went there to watch them or anything.
They just happened to be there and she just happened to like that spot.
It was the same kids every year.
Laughing, running.
Common, stupid kids with their bug nets and their skinned knees.
Running around in their stupid shorts and t-shirts.
Growing taller and taller each year like a bunch of dumb weeds after a rainstorm.
She never watched them for long since, even during the summer, she had lessons to attend and performances to give.
She'd always been way too busy for all that stupid kid stuff.
Too busy for all those stupid kids.
There was an anthill near the trees and sometimes she pretended those ants were those kids and she'd squish them one by one.
They were different than her.
Different from the other kids who trained with her.
The ones who put needles in her shoes and sticky candy in her hair.
The kids at Grandmother's place were jealous of her.
They envied her position, her talent, whatever.
The kids by the river didn't even know she existed, probably wouldn't have cared even if they did know, because kids who played in the river probably didn't know anything about dancing.
Not that she'd cared, because she didn't.
They were all stupid.
Always kicking water at each other and laughing and trying to catch the frogs that lived down on the banks.
She'd tried catching a frog once.
It hadn't gone well.
She'd ended up stepping weird on a rock and tripping over her kimono and falling on her butt in the swallow, muddy part of the river.
When she'd arrived back at Grandmother's place, dripping wet and covered in muck, the servants had laughed behind their hands at her and Grandmother had made her stand outside naked and shivering until new clothes could be brought for her.
She'd had extra lessons that day and the day after and the day after that for a whole month.
Because if she had enough energy to cause trouble than she wasn't working hard enough.
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Sometimes she imagined pushing her off the cliff outside the music venue.
Or at least she thought she did.
It was kind of hard to be completely sure.
She would see her standing out there, right at the edge, staring off into the distance.
Just standing there.
Like… like she was asking for it, begging for it.
It had been the easiest thing in the world to walk up to her, to reach out and press her hands against her back.
And it was so, so, so satisfying to feel her body reel back instinctively against the touch of her hands, to fight against the weight even when it was already too late and she was pushing forward with all her might to shove her right over the edge.
She'd always lean forward to watch her flailing body plummet towards the choppy waters below.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Watching her fall until she was made so tiny by distance that she hadn't even been able to see her actually disappear beneath the ocean waves. She'd just stood there in the aftermath, staring down at the dark water waiting for Mikan to bob back up like a cork.
But she never had.
Her hands had tingled as she'd wrapped her arms tight around her stomach and taken a few big steps back from the edge as if moving away might make it more real... or less.
Either way, by the time she turned away from the cliff's edge, she could always feel laughter bubbling up in her throat.
It had felt so good.
Even if she was just imagining it.
And it wasn't like she hadn't deserved it.
Oh, Mikan deserved it all right.
She had always deserved everything that happened to her.
The big, slow, sloppy dummy.
She was weak.
And she was ugly.
And she'd always just stood there and took it.
Always apologizing and apologizing and apologizing.
Because she knew it was her fault.
That it was what she deserved.
Never lashing out no matter what anyone did to her, no matter what nasty names she called her or whether she tripped her or put gum in her hair or cut up all her notebooks or stole her supplies or switched the labels on her medications.
She never got mad.
Never.
Never.
Never.
She'd always just… stuttered out apology after apology.
Disgusting.
She was disgusting.
She never stood up for herself.
And she deserved everything she got.
All those stupid, stupid, stupid apologies.
It made her sick.
She made her sick.
She always had.
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"Ah! S-sorry, I'm so sorry! I didn't think anyone would be back here. Are you all right?"
She dashed her sleeves across her eyes, chest tight with mortification.
There wasn't supposed to be anyone there.
She'd come there to be alone.
Why was there someone there?
This was….
She was….
"I'm fine," she managed, even though her eyes were probably red and her cheeks were still damp and her feet were still bleeding. "Shut up. Leave me alone, you…"
She couldn't think of an insult worth of the moment and she was already dissolving back into tears again, lip trembling, hands shaking too badly to pull out the other needles.
There wasn't supposed to be anyone back there.
The show was still going on and she'd found this nice secluded area in the wooded area behind the shrine and she was supposed to be... stupid.
It was all so stupid.
She just… she just needed to calm down.
She could do this if she just had a minute to herself.
"S-s-sorry, you just looked so…" The girl trailed off, her fingers clutching the hem of her filthy skirt so hard her knuckles were white. "I-I-I w-want to help. M-may I look at your feet?"
Her hair was dark and uneven, her clothes were dirty, but she was smiling.
It was a weird crooked smile, like a brightly-colored wagon with a busted wheel.
"G-get away from me," she snarled, jerking her foot away from the girl's grasping hands. "Pervert."
The girl blinked at her, surprised, her eyes wide, as she reached out and took hold of her foot in a firm grasp and pulled it into her lap. "S-sorry, but I'm afraid I'm g-going to have to insist. I-If you leave those wounds untreated, you could be risking infection."
She smelled funny.
Like medicine and old socks.
"Why do you care? You don't know me," she mumbled, turning her gaze away.
It wasn't like she'd asked for her help or anything, she just didn't feel like arguing with her anymore.
"You n-need help. And I… I'll do my very best to help you… even if it's not…" she trailed off, pulling a small white box from her apron pocket and cracking it open one-handed with practiced ease.
Probably did this kind of stuff all the time.
Helping strangers for no good reason.
How stupid.
She was probably some kind of pervert.
Gross.
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Sometimes she thought she saw someone standing in the distance.
Golden hair blowing in the ocean breeze.
But when she turned to look, they were already gone.
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Her father came to visit her sometimes.
She hadn't seen her parents since Grandmother had picked her up, couldn't even really remember what they looked like anymore.
But she was sure she'd recognize him if she saw him.
Not that she'd seen anyone at all, she hadn't, but she still knew he'd been there all the same.
He left her little bags of gummy candies tied to the fence down by the river.
He must have known she liked to go down there.
Must have been watching from somewhere and seen her sitting against the tree, known it was her favorite spot.
It was so like him to find a clever way around those stupid rules.
A way to let her know that he loved her.
That he was still thinking about her.
He wasn't allowed to visit her, but this wasn't quite visiting so it wasn't like he was doing anything wrong.
And it made her feel so good, all warm and gooey like fresh baked cookies inside when she found one of those colorful bags tied to the post, tiny bells jangling in the wind to call her attention to them.
It didn't matter what kind of day she'd had or how mean the other girls had been to her, seeing one of those bags always made all that crap just fade away. It made her feel special, even on days when training had been particularly hard and her legs ached and ached.
It wasn't like it was every day or on any kind of set schedule, but that didn't matter so much. She didn't mind a few disappointing days in-between, because there would always be another bag eventually, another little reminder that he cared.
She wrote little thank you notes and kept a few pinned inside her obi so she could stuff them back in the bags and tie them back to the posts after she'd eaten all the candy inside. Nothing crazy specific, obviously, she wasn't dumb. She didn't want to get him in trouble if someone from the house saw them, just brief words of gratitude that could be meant for anyone at all.
And those bags and the notes inside were always gone the next day and a few days or weeks later there'd be a new bag left in their place.
And she'd known her father loved her.
And that was good enough.
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Sometimes she stared at her reflection in shop windows, shower doors, and she was sure it was somebody else.
Somebody taller.
Somebody with bigger boobs.
Some total stranger who just looked a little bit like her.
But by the time she realized it was weird, her reflection was just the same as it ever was and no matter how long she stared at it, it just stared back, until she wondered if she'd imagined the whole thing.
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"You really shouldn't talk to her like that," Mahiru sighed half-heartedly, not even bothering to glance up from her camera display as the door slammed shut in the distance.
She groaned, rolling her eyes at the token protest, "Oh, sure, right, like you actually care."
"Hm? What was that?" Mahiru murmured, still not glancing up from her camera.
"Nothing," she replied, sullenly, scuffing one sandal against dirt. "Ugh. Whatever. If she didn't want me to be mean to her she'd stop showing her ugly face around me, wouldn't she?"
"Uh-huh."
She frowned, glancing back up to find that Mahiru was crouching down, refocusing her camera. Stupid camera. She probably hadn't heard a word she'd said.
Dummy.
It was always like that these days.
Stupid camera.
Stupid Mahiru.
"Look, can we go now?"
"You can go if you want to, I'm not quite done."
"It's just a dead squirrel. I don't get what's so interesting about it."
"Of course you don't," Mahiru answered, voice flat and disinterested. "Don't you have training to go do?"
Heat flared in her face and she twisted her fingers up in the ends of her sleeves, familiar anxiety dropping snakes in her belly, "Yeah, well, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come along… take some pictures or something?"
"Sure," Mahiru replied, dubiously, her focus already back on that gross, ant-covered squirrel she'd been taking pictures of for the better part of an hour. "In a little while. I'm need to finish up here first."
There was no point in lingering, she knew that.
Just like she knew Mahiru wasn't going to come to take pictures during her training session.
Old Mahiru might have, but new Mahiru… new Mahiru was like a total stranger.
A stranger who never smiled and barely looked at anyone unless it was through the lens of her stupid camera.
New Mahiru didn't care about her, didn't care about anything.
New Mahiru sucked.
"Whatever, fine, I'm going," she grumbled, tromping off back to the main building with a disgusted sigh.
It wasn't like she'd even really wanted her to come anyway.
She was better off on her own anyway.
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Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, she thought she heard that stupid bear laughing.
Pupupupupu...
But when she opened her eyes there was never anything there.
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She watched Mikan run down the hall, clutching her books and trailing bandages.
Maybe she'd step on one and go crashing into a wall or something.
They'd be pretty funny.
And it'd serve her right for not looking out for herself in the first place.
Stupid.
She was limping a little bit; it wasn't super noticeable if you weren't paying attention, but she definitely was.
If she were an antelope on the Serengeti surely some lion would have noticed and picked her off by now. Torn her to itty bitty bits and dragged her back home for lunch while the rest of the herd escaped.
"She'd probably thank it for paying attention to her or apologize for tasting bad or something," she muttered flippantly to no one in particular as she hiked her bag up on her shoulder.
Stupid, heavy books.
Why did they even need them? It wasn't like the teachers ever taught them anything.
She'd only ever bothered to go to class in the first place because Mahiru had insisted they should.
She wasn't sure why she still bothered to go now when Mahiru didn't care anymore and didn't even show up half the time.
Just habit probably.
It wasn't like she needed to learn any of that stuff.
Most people probably never even used all that history and science crap after they got out of school anyway.
And she definitely didn't need to know any of that crap to dance.
Maybe she'd stop going.
She wondered if anyone would even notice or care if she did.
Probably not.
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It was broken.
Broken.
She was broken.
Every breathe was agony.
White noise in her ears and pain throbbing through her head, almost too much too feel.
Was she screaming?
She didn't think so.
Her knee was already swelling, purple and red and bulging grotesquely to one side.
She could hear the people gathered around her talking.
People talking and talking and talking, but she couldn't hear what they were saying.
Someone was trying to grab her leg, to hold it still, like she was gonna try and make a run for it or something.
Run for it.
Ha.
She'd probably never run again.
Never dance again.
Every involuntary twitch of motion, every time that red-nailed hand pressed her leg into the ground, searing needles of pain lanced through her veins like threading through the eye of a needle.
It hurt.
It hurt.
Everything hurt.
Why was this happening?
Why?
Why?
Help.
It hurts.
Hands.
It hurts.
There were hands all over her now.
Holding her still?
Picking her up?
She wasn't sure.
Hands on her arms, her legs.
Someone was laughing.
Laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing.
Was it her?
Was she the one laughing?
Helping hands.
Pinching her flesh.
Holding her tight.
She slapped at those helpful hands, screamed, cursed, anything to just make it stop.
Make it stop!
It hurts.
It hurts.
Please make it stop.
Make it stop, make it stop, makeitstop makeitstop makeitstop stop stop stop stop stop stop stopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopstopst-
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There was little specks of blood on her socks.
Gross.
The girl before her was sobbing, clutching her shattered, bloody foot as she wailed pain and apologies like that was supposed to make it better.
Like that was supposed to make her stop.
"Aw, see, she's sorry," Enoshima murmured, her voice slow and sinuous as a snake weaving through the tall grass. "Won't you forgive her now?"
Her knee ached, it always ached now.
No matter what she did, it ached.
And all that whining was giving her a monster headache.
She brought the hammer down again and with a juicy crunch the noise stopped and the room was silent once more.
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She shoved her off the cliff again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Over and over and over, but even that had gotten lame after the first couple times.
She wanted to hear her scream.
Hear her beg.
Something.
Anything.
But she never did.
And the quiet made her feel queasy.
It was too quiet.
Way too quiet.
She'd tried talking to herself, but it didn't really help.
It just made her feel more pathetic.
Made her more and more keenly aware that the was no one to talk to and nothing to do.
Sometimes she made the long walk over to the second island to beat the stupid jukebox into submission, but it took forever to finally start working and when it did it only ever played songs she hated and commercial jingles.
Stupid bubblegum pop crap that got stuck in her head and she'd find herself humming days later.
Still it had been better than all the nothing.
Not a lot better, but still… better.
It was something at least.
Something in a whole wide world full of nothing.
Nothing to do and no one to do it with.
And then one day, as if to add insult to never-ending freaking injury, it had started freaking raining.
A couple weeks of relentless freaking sunshine and then the clouds roll in and she barely had time to duck into the stupid hotel lobby before the rain came pouring down.
"Great," she grumbled, standing in the darkened lobby and glaring out into the night as thunder crashed and lightning lit the sky. "For a deserted hell-hole, you sure are awfully freaking dramatic. I'm not scared of you, stupid island."
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"Hey! That's mine!" She'd called, stomping across the grounds, kimono rucked up and thrown over her arm so it didn't drag through the snow that had fallen the previous evening.
The man at the fence looked up, wide-eyed, hair shaggy and dark, chin and cheeks dark with stubble.
Gross.
His face was vaguely familiar in that way that guy's faces sometimes were. Mostly she thought one old guy looked pretty much the same as the next and the guy fiddling with the bag on the fence was no exception.
He offered her a smile.
Tentative.
Creepy.
Super. Freaking. Creepy.
"I knew you liked them," he said, lifting the bag from the post and holding it out for her like an offering. "I kept all your notes. You were always so proper and polite."
"Those… those weren't for you," she whispered or thought she did, she wasn't sure if she actually managed to say it aloud, because it seemed like all the oxygen had been sucked right out of the air and she was left gapping at him like a goldfish pulled from its bowl.
"I… I saw on the website that you were back, that you had a performance tomorrow."
Everything seemed blurry.
"… Took a chance…"
She couldn't move.
"…Beautiful…"
When had he gotten so close?
He'd been on the other side of the fence and then he was right there in front of her, fingers not quite brushing against her face.
His breath stank like sake and sour milk.
A big hand closed over her shoulder and squeezed.
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She woke screaming, damp with sweat, fingers curled into fists so tight that her nails cut into her palms.
Just a dream.
It had been just a dream.
Just another stupid dream.
That hadn't happened.
It hadn't happened like that.
Stupid dreams.
Night after night.
Terrible things.
Weird things.
Gross things.
Things that never happened.
It wasn't unusual anymore, she totally expected it now, but it still… sucked.
It sucked.
Everything sucked.
She pulled her knees up beneath her chin and jerked the blankets up over her head.
The bed didn't smell like him anymore, if it ever had at all, but it still felt safe.
Safe in a way no other place did.
Which was probably dumb.
It wasn't like they'd been super close or anything.
It wasn't as if she'd even really liked him.
Mahiru had been way more fun.
He'd just… he'd just reminded her of her father a little.
They weren't really even anything alike, not really, but they were… maybe kind of nice in the same ways.
And dumb in the same ways.
Ways she didn't really understand or approve of.
They were suckers just waiting to get taken advantage of, probably, the way they tried to help people, the way they were nice even when they didn't have to be.
She remembered her father paying for some lady's groceries at the supermarket once.
Helping some random kid on the playground tie his laces.
Stupid things like that.
It was what she remembered the most about him.
His face… his face was kind of blurry whenever she tried to picture it. Sandy blond hair like hers and dark eyes and she thought he probably laughed a lot so he'd probably had those little wrinkles people got around their eyes and mouths from laughing and smiling too much.
He'd been nice and he'd loved her and sometimes- if she tried really hard- she could almost remember what his hugs had felt like.
Warm and just a little too tight, like he was trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube.
He'd always bought her ice cream when they went to the park together and carried her home on his shoulders when she got tired.
And she'd always, always, always told him she was tired even if she wasn't.
She'd liked the way things looked from way up high, liked winding her fingers in his hair to hold on, pretending she was using it to steer.
He'd given her a tiny potted cactus after her first performance.
It was one of the only things they'd let her take with her besides clothes and stuff when she'd moved to Grandmother's house.
Hinata had never given her a cactus or hugged her or carried her on his shoulders or whatever, but he'd been nice to her.
Even when there was nothing in it for him.
Even when he didn't have to be.
He'd even brought her gummies a few times too after… after Mahiru was gone.
It had tasted pretty good.
Even if was kind of stupid of him.
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There was blood on her kimono, blood soaking through her thick socks so they squished and squelched every time she took a step.
She didn't mind the mess.
Not really.
Ibuki would help her get cleaned up later... probably, maybe.
There was blood matted in his greying, sandy blond hair... what was left of it, splashed liberally across the the fine furnishings of their fine home.
He'd been so surprised to see her.
Ibuki's guitar lay in pieces, scattered across the floor, but the broken neck and it's tangled, dangling strings still hung limply from one hand.
"Feel better?" She'd asked, touching a bloodied hand briefly against Ibuki's prickly hair before letting it drop back to her side.
"Thought it was what you wanted Ibuki to do."
Maybe it had been.
Ibuki's breath was warm against her neck.
Was gonna fall asleep there?
"Dummy," she'd muttered, but there'd been no real emotion behind it.
Maybe later she'd be pissed off about it.
Probably not though.
She'd thought maybe she'd at least feel satisfied or something, but mostly... mostly she just felt... empty.
Was this what despair really was?
Not that gleeful feeling of triumph, but instead just... emptiness?
She let her head drop against Ibuki's shoulder.
They probably looked stupid, awkward, standing there with their heads on each other's shoulders, their arms dangling at their sides, but there wasn't anyone around to see... so it was probably fine.
They stood like that for a long time.
When she'd finally lifted her head up and leaned back against the wall at her back, Ibuki had let her go without protest.
Had stepped back and stared at her with dark, fathomless eyes.
Stupid gimmick lenses.
She should never have let her raid that stupid costume shop.
"Maybe we should go meet up with that Kamukura guy. It's not like I think it's a good plan or anything, I mean, it's stupid. They're stupid. Whatever. Just... I don't know. I'm tired, I guess."
"Ibuki is too."
She sounded it.
She kind of looked it, but she was pretty sure the heavy shadows around her eyes were mostly make-up.
Probably.
It was hard to tell.
She glanced away, gaze flicking between the body on the floor and the shattered guitar pieces that surrounded it.
"Guess we might as well go together then."
They did everything else together pretty much.
Why not this too?
They weren't friends.
They weren't anything really.
Or maybe they were.
Something like that.
Not that it mattered.
It was just better than being alone.
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When she'd woken up in Hinata's room that first day, she hadn't known it was his.
All the cabins had looked pretty much the same except for the crap inside them and she'd never been in his before so all she'd really known for sure that first day was that she'd woken up in a cabin that wasn't hers and whoever it belonged to had totally crap taste.
Seriously: who the heck would want to wake up to that stupid bear everyday?
Much less a couple dozen of him?
So lame.
She hadn't remember much of anything that first day.
Not about everybody getting sick or about that horse-poop bitch putting a knife to her throat or about Ibuki or any of it.
She'd hadn't even remembered about what had happened to Mahiru.
Looking back, she actually wasn't sure what she'd remembered at all… only that it hadn't been any of that, because she'd spent the whole day wandering through all those deserted places like a moron calling for Mahiru, for Ibuki, for Hinata, for Akane.
But nobody had answered.
She'd even tried calling for stupid Souda and all the rest.
She'd even tried calling for her.
She'd looked everywhere for them; had shouted threats and cursed at them and demanded they come out and there'd still been nothing and nobody.
She'd even gone as far as to rig up traps so they'd get caught if they tried to go places she'd already searched.
But there'd been no one to trap and no one to be found no matter how long or how hard she looked.
Not then.
Not that first day.
At first, she'd thought it was just a practical joke.
A really bad, really mean, really stupid practical joke.
As the day wore on, she'd kept expecting them to pop up out of nowhere.
Only they never did.
And the whole time she was looking for them, her throat had ached.
It had ached and ached and ached no matter what she did or where she went, it ached.
And she'd just thought….
She wasn't sure what she'd thought, what excuse she'd made up in her head to keep herself from thinking about it too much or poking at it or even looking at it in the windows of the supermarket or the shower glass or any of the other dozens of reflective surfaces she must have passed by that day.
She wasn't sure how she'd missed the blood that stiffened her kimono.
Wasn't even totally sure it had even been there that first day.
All she knew for certain was that that first day had passed in a blur of irritation and fear and night had come and she'd just kept looking, kept shouting for them until her throat hurt so bad she couldn't bear to do it anymore.
She'd finally sat down on the beach, exhausted from all the shouting and crying and walking.
Eventually she'd fallen asleep leaning against one of the palm trees, hoping someone, anyone, would come and find her.
Come and apologize for making her worry, making her cry.
Anyone.
That night she'd dreamed about pulling someone's toenails off with a rusty pair of pliers while Ibuki sang about oysters and blood and hormones.
The next morning she'd woken up in that same cabin again, Hinata's cabin, tucked into his bed just as she'd been the first day, with all those stupid Monokuma figurines lined up so neatly on the shelves on the far side of the room mocking her.
She'd gotten up and smashed them all to pieces.
It hadn't really made her feel any better.
Her throat had still hurt.
And somehow, between one step and the next, she'd remembered that Mahiru hadn't been able to answer her because Mahiru was dead.
Remembered the way they'd all made fun of the memorial she'd built for her.
Remembered Kazuryuu kneeling, bleeding, apologizing.
Those awful days had all come rushing back all at once and she'd thrown back her head and wailed.
Eventually she must have climbed back into Hinata's bed, because she'd spent most of that second day lying there sweating and sniveling with the blankets pulled up over her head.
She'd woken on the third day tucked into Hinata's bed, just as she had every day before, and those stupid Monokuma figurines, had been all lined up on the shelves, neat as could be, as if the previous day had never happened.
And the worst part was, that she wasn't really totally, completely sure that it had.
She'd smashed them all again, stomped those broken pieces to powder with her sandaled feet.
That's when she had first noticed that there was blood all over her kimono.
And she'd remembered.
She'd remembered.
Remembered clutching her kimono closed as she pushed open that stupid, heavy-ass door.
Remembered seeing her laying on the ground so silent and still that she'd been sure she was dead.
Remembered being scared.
Remembered wanting to just turn and run.
Turn and run and never come back, maybe get help, maybe, but definitely get the hell out of there.
But… but she hadn't.
Because Mahiru wouldn't have run.
Mahiru would have been brave.
Would have at least tried to help.
"Mioda? Is that you, music dork? What are you doing here?"
It had been hard to breathe past the panic, the fear, swirling and expanding within her chest and she'd been pretty sure that if she stopped talking her throat would just close up and she'd pass out and hit her head and die.
She'd just kept talking and talking and talking and she didn't remember most of what she'd said.
She remembered that momentary rush of relief when she'd watched her push herself up, slowly, painstakingly.
Remembered trying to hold her kimono closed while she clamored up on the stage to try to help her up.
Most of all, she remembered the exact moment when she'd seen the rope knotted around Ibuki's neck.
Remembered the way the room had seemed to tilt and blur around her, the way she'd stumbled back and away as if getting further from her might make that rope disappear, might right the world again.
Because, seriously, who the crap would want to kill Ibuki?
Then there'd been that arm like a vise around her stomach and that familiar voice in her ear, whisper-soft like the wind blowing through the cracks of her composure, "I-I might be mistaken, but I believe you're now regretting every cruel thing you have ever said to me."
And she'd known.
The second she'd felt that arm wrap around her waist, heard that voice in her ear, she'd known she was going to die.
There was a knife at her throat and she could feel the edge stinging against her skin.
Ibuki had stared past them, eyes had been wide and vacant, her face still flushed with fever.
She wasn't sure she even knew where she was, what was happening.
What the hell kind of asshole killed someone like that?
Bitch.
"I always knew there was something wrong with you," she'd snarled, shoving the words out past the fear trying to strangle her once more.
Like hell she was gonna let that stupid, lamb-brained asshole see her beg.
She wasn't gonna die like that.
Mahiru wouldn't have begged.
Ibuki probably couldn't beg... probably hadn't even really understood what was happening to her.
"Did you?" Mikan's breath had smelled rotten, like she hadn't brushed her teeth in days.
Gross.
The knife pressed harder against her skin, hard enough that for a second she was sure that was it and she'd found herself trying to jerk away from her, to break her hold, to do something, anything. She'd squirmed and that stupid bitch had said something, but she had no idea what, only that whatever it had been had sent Ibuki stumbling away with a clumsy salute and a gravelly 'yes ma'am'.
She knew it wouldn't do any good, but she'd tried to call after her anyway.
"Wh-wh-what the… What do you think you're doing, Mioda? Don't you realize what this total nutjob just tried to do to you? Ru-"
The knife had dug in harder than before and she could feel blood flowing down her neck, her shoulder, between her breasts, and her heart had been like a drumbeat in her head. Too fast and too loud.
And her body jerked almost of its own volition, shivering.
One last dance.
One last dance to the rhythm of dread, the melody of fear, a song of inevitable death, inevitable defeat.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die.
We're going to die.
And she'd just been… so mad.
Stupid. Fucking. Kimono.
Stupid Kimono and stupid her for not just asking for help.
For never learning to do it up properly on her own.
Stupid Hinata and Kazuryuu for not… not being there, not realizing, not whatever.
Stupid Ibuki for catching the stupid lemming disease.
Stupid Sonia and her stupid advice and stupid her for taking it.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair.
"I-It would p-probably be best if you kept q-quiet, don't you think?"
She'd almost laughed at that, but it had been so hard to breathe around that sudden overwhelming rage, "Like it's going to matter in the end. Who do you think you're kidding? I'm not getting out of here alive."
"T-that is t-true, I'm afraid, and, you'll have to p-pardon me for pointing out the obvious, b-but t-there are far worse things I could do t-than j-just kill you, you know."
"Here's your bucket and duct tape, ma'am," Ibuki had rasped, dropping her burden at their feet.
Her neck was so red, chafed raw by that stupid freaking rope.
She didn't even really look like Ibuki anymore.
Like that stupid bear and his stupid disease had already killed Ibuki long before stupid Mikan had ever thought about putting a rope around her neck.
"I always knew you were just the worst," she snapped, because there'd been nothing else to say.
It wouldn't have mattered what she did, what she said.
She was always going to die there, one way or another.
But.
She still hadn't wanted her to get her way.
So, she'd fought back.
Wriggled like a worm on a hook.
She'd shoved and kicked and punched and squirmed and she could hear Mikan saying something, but there was nothing she could have said that mattered and then she'd felt the burn of the blade across her throat.
And still she tried, she'd kept moving, kicking, kept twisting in her grip even as she was choking, drowning, until everything got too heavy, too dark, too difficult.
Until there'd been nothing left.
And then she'd been laying in Hinata's room again, in that warm bed, staring at all those stupid Monokuma figurines.
Again.
Right.
Dead.
She'd died.
She'd died and Mahiru had died and that Fatty Togami had died and that stupid cook had died and Pekoyama had died and Kazuryuu had almost died and Ibuki was probably dead too.
And none of it was fair.
It just wasn't fair.
Had that bitch gotten to leave?
Had she gotten away with it?
No, no way.
The very idea was... stupid.
Hinata wouldn't have let her.
And even if she'd managed to full him somehow, she still wouldn't have managed to pull one over on that crazy Komaeda... assuming she hadn't killed him too.
Whatever.
Someone had probably figured it out.
So that stupid, crazy cow was probably dead too.
She wished there'd been even the teeniest, tiniest bit of satisfaction in knowing that.
But there wasn't.
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Every morning those stupid figurines were there to greet her the moment she opened her eyes.
And every morning she smashed them to bits or threw them in the ocean or buried them on the beach.
But no matter how many times she hid them or destroyed them, they always came back.
Every morning she'd be there again and they'd be there again… just waiting for her.
Not a scratch on them.
So stupid.
One day blended into the next and the only highlight of all those long, stupid weeks was that, every once in a while, she got to kill imaginary Mikan.
She'd pushed her off that cliff a bunch of times and drowned her in the ocean once or twice and, the last time she'd seen her, she'd bashed her ugly head in with Ibuki's stupid guitar.
Not for any particular reason really, she'd just happened to have it on hand.
She'd started carrying the stupid thing around her with the idea that maybe she'd learn to play it or something.
She'd left Mikan's body on the beach, her head split open like an overripe melon, blood and brains and dark hair spilled all over the shining sand.
Gross.
She'd tossed the shattered, bloodstained remains of the guitar into the ocean.
It had been a dumb idea anyway.
It wasn't like she'd been able to play anything that sounded even halfway decent.
When she'd looked back, all traces that Mikan had been there were gone… just like always.
It wasn't like she hadn't known she'd be back eventually- she always came back eventually- but it had still been annoying to have all her hard work undone so quickly.
It was frustrating.
And stupid.
So.
Stupid.
And the worst thing about it after a while was that she couldn't ever really anticipate when or where she'd show back up.
She'd just pop up out of freaking nowhere like a stupid, ugly jack-in-the-box every couple of days, wandering around the island like she owned the joint.
Like she'd had some right to be there, ruining her stupid, boring afterlife island with her presence.
And the worst thing about it was that she had never seemed to see her or hear her, no matter how much she screamed and cursed at her.
It was so dumb.
Sometimes, just because killing her was kind of boring, she'd even followed her around for awhile, tried talking to her.
Just once or twice.
But not because she'd wanted to, obviously, but because she'd just….
She'd never really liked being alone.
Not really.
But Mikan had never answered, no matter what she did.
She'd never even looked at her.
And she'd always really, really, really hated being ignored.
So, eventually, she'd just end up killing her again and getting on with her day, because if Mikan was dead than at least she didn't have to watch her wander around the island ignoring her.
As she stomped up to the second floor of the hotel, she'd realized it had actually been kind of a long time since she'd last seen her.
Not that she'd been looking.
Just... it had been awhile.
So, maybe the guitar had finally been the thing that got the job done.
Still, she kind of doubted it.
Mikan was probably out there wandering around in the storm like the stupid cow she was.
Probably didn't even have the good sense to get out of the stupid, freaking rain.
Well, screw her.
Let her turn into a giant prune.
There was no way she was going out in that stupid storm just so she could be ignored.
Still... waiting around for the storm to stop was boring.
B-O-R-I-N-G.
Of course, that was the whole stupid island in a nutshell.
At least she'd finally had the time to figure out how to tie her stupid freaking kimono herself.
Not that it really mattered.
And not that she even wanted to wear it since it was covered in blood that never came out no matter how hard she scrubbed at it.
Plus, the stupid freaking thing only ever reminded her that it was her own fault that she'd gotten stabbed in the throat by that stupid turd-faced jerk butt in the first place.
Not that she was likely to forget that with since the stupid cut never healed and even though she wrapped in a bunch of bandages every morning it still hurt every time she moved too fast or turned to look at things or breathed too deeply.
Still, most of the time she just tried not to think about it, any of it.
Focusing on how much everything on the island of the dead sucked was a whole lot easier than dwelling on her own mistakes.
Whatever.
She'd pretty much already accepted that things were just going to be a big bag of crap-faced suck forever.
She sighed, flopping back on the floor of the restaurant and staring up at the ceiling fans whirling slowly overhead.
Outside the rain was still falling.
And, sometimes, the sky lit up with streaks of purple-white lightning, but mostly the sky was just dark and boring and barely worth looking at.
She'd built another shrine for Mahiru to replace the one someone had ruined.
She'd also gone ahead and made shrines for Ibuki and Hinata to go with it because they'd been all right and it wasn't like she didn't have the time.
She wasn't sure if Hinata was dead or not, but... he was a nice guy so she was pretty sure that would get him killed sooner or later.
The candles she'd lined each of shrines with burned merrily in the darkness, casting long shadows across the walls.
Shadows that flickered and danced whenever a strong breeze blew in.
She hadn't made shrines for the others, but maybe she would eventually.
If she got bored enough.
It was still raining.
It seemed like it had been raining for a long time.
Was she out there somewhere?
Were they?
Would it still be raining when she woke up tomorrow?
She didn't have any answers.
Still... she was pretty sure it couldn't rain forever.
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